PROGRESS REPORTS

Planning 2005
With the new 6.1 surround rig it was possible to test out new ideas and to hear new ideas in quite a unique way. But the complexity of running the installation through a computer is something rather not tried again, unless the audio was to be manipulated more in a live context. Producing a DVD version of the installation would be preferable as this would mean that multiple presentations could be made on a given day, without the need for operator involvement. Researching the various formats and standards of DVD recording and playback will commence.
This attempt to produce a DVD version of the installation will be tested in a new performance of the original Cafe Voyeur material that will take place in the upstairs gallery space of Kent Street Cafe prior to the 2005 Fringe Festival.
Other plans include experimenting with different speaker layouts, more robust mastering techniques, the use of decorrelated surround sound reverbs and different content.

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Conclusions 2004
Presentation- The brief for this installation was to play the audio back in the same location as where the recordings took place and at a level similar to the level of live conversation; this was to make voyeurs of the audience and the sound levels and design were such that some words would stand out (or punch through). Some people listening said they would have preferred a more neutral environment and a better indication of when the installation actually started. All of which proved to us that the brief was answered!

Technical- The 6.1 surround rig proved capable of presenting audio into a venue of that size but was maxing the volume on opening night. The quality and clarity at such a level was lessened. The smallness of the speakers was a benefit in that they were easily hidden within the venue at key locations. The audio was driven with seven uncompressed 48 kHz 16 bit wav files playing live through Cubase mapped to individual speakers, the LFE channel was not bass managed and had its own purposely written track of audio. Limited level checks were made for each speaker pair with several segments being too loud for the venue in comparison to what had played before and were changed as the performance progressed. More research into the 5.1, and upwards, sound format is required.

Artistic- The scope of this project was to record the conversations that occur within a given cafe, limited to the time made available to be on-site for recording and the presence and usability of two wireless recording rigs. This recorded audio would then be listened to and sounds, words and/or phrases of interest would be copied into a library of sounds to be used in the production. The definition of interest in this case is that which sounds interesting and that which is interesting in what is actually spoken. What sounds interesting could be deriven from a persons accent, inflection or the timbre of the voice. Interest in the spoken words was deriven from the actual words used, ie the commonality or uniqueness, the grammatical usage and the context. A "Samples Transcript" was compiled based on these criteria showing a list of the words spoken and their frequency of use.
This project was borne of an interest in what people actually spoke about when they were in a cafe, no pre-conceptions apart from using our own conversations in cafes as an example. A broad range of conversation topics and styles was recorded within the two weeks we were at Kent Street, personalities were observed and stereo-types (from our perspective) were made - an obvious (cliche) example is that women tended to talk about relationships and men tended to talk about anything but. That the people that were recorded tended to be white, middle class and 18 to 30 year olds should also be noted.

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The Installation 2004
For two weeks at Kent St, we run the installation live from seven audio tracks out of Cubase. The volume on opening night was maxed to keep above the din of conversations from all the guests, and proved so popular that the installation was run twice. The afternoon matinees were quieter allowing more of the installation to be heard. Each session of the installation filled the venue with listeners. Some of the feedback from guests indicated that they would prefer a more accoustically neutral environment to be able to concentrate more on the sounds from the installation.

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Opening Night plans...
DJs Kaputnik and Reductionist will be providing some pre and post show tunes, visuals by Object State. Greg Barber of City of Yarra council fame will be officially launching the show at 8pm Thursday.

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Installation prep
The orientation of speakers to be used in the Kent St installation will take advantage of the layout of the cafe - Front Left and Front Right at the entry doors, Centre Left and Centre Right at the top of the internal stairs, Rear Left and Rear Right at the bar end of the room. The LFE, or SubBass will be located at the foot of the stairs alongside the Sound Operator computer. A second computer will plug into the in-house projector and display the Cafe Voyeur wallpaper during the performance and will also be used to project the Visual Thesaurus word maps pre and post performance.

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Mixing to 6.1
Finally back in the City Frequencies studio, the monster task of mixing takes place. 140 tracks mixed down to 70. These 70 tracks mixed down to 14 and then to the installation ready 7 tracks of audio for 6.1 surround playback. Minor adjustments were made to the levels of several of the speaker pairs but on the whole the mixdown was flawless. Total render time was about 3 hours.

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Final arrangement of compostions locked in
Relocated to the main hall of the Angliss Neighbourhood House, Footscray for the final arrangement to be decided upon. The structure of the installation as a whole was the main concern here with important elements such as emotion, narrative and tempo being of prime importance. 140 tracks of audio prepared for mixdown. The fish tank gets larger.

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Arrangement of compositions
The City Frequencies team relocated to the Tower Room at the CUB Malthouse Theatre, Southbank to run the 6.1 system for the first time within a room with dimensions that closely matched those of Kent Street Cafe. Three days and nights were spent on the arrangements and seperation of audio to specific speakers. Twenty compositions were selected as suitable for the installation. The fish tank makes its first appearance.

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Live-to-air broadcast announced
Symbiosis, a show on Melbourne's RRR radio station, have invited City Frequencies to play sounds from the recordings and current compositions live on Sunday 3 October at midnight. This broadcast will utilise the sounds and some of the structures explored but in stereo instead of the 6.1 surround sound of the upcoming installation. It is envisaged that a laptop running Cubase with a midi controller keyboard will be used to trigger and manipulate sounds.

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Source material recording session completed
2 FM transmitting battery powered microphones were hidden in cheap vases of plastic flowers on two seperate tables within the Kent St cafe. FM signal broadcast between 87.6 - 89.3MHz and picked up by two digital radio receivers at a range of about 5 metres from source. Some degree of background noise from the cafe, tuning static due to passing people and wandering commercial broadcasts were noticed during the recording sessions.

test-rig photo one and two (70kb jpgs)
actual rig used as per promo photo on cv.htm page

7 x 2 hour Digital Audio Tapes
2 x 14 hours 2 channel recordings
28 hours total

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Selective phrase sampling phase completed
Audio from DATs ported to computer and saved as conversation length .wav files. These then broken down to phrases, words and sounds of interest. Criteria for which was based on recording quality, context, interesting word or phrase use, interesting accent or pronunciation. This is not a computer aided process - this is achieved by listening...

10 conversations
4957 total words
1263 unique words
5 letters average word length

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Transcription complete
All phrases and sounds recorded and saved as individual sound files. Samples Transcript of the words spoken captured has been compiled:

word doc download here (34kb doc)

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Transcription stats complete
Using two language programs (Wurdz and Visual Thesaurus) statistics compiled of word usage as derived from the Samples Transcript document. Stats based on words encountered equal to or greater than 5 times:

word: frequency

NOUNS
a: 128 anything: 8
bed: 6 beer: 5 being: 8 bit: 16
car: 9 cat: 6 cold: 7 coming: 6
day: 6
enough: 7 even: 7 everything: 6
fuck: 7
girl: 5 god: 6 going: 28 good: 6 guy: 5
he: 63 hello: 9 her: 6 him: 23 his: 12 home: 8
house: 9
I: 301 it: 167 its: 10
joe: 8
kind: 9
man: 5 me: 18 moment: 6
night: 5 nothing: 6
organ: 7
people: 7
she: 36
shit: 6 something: 18 stuff: 7
they: 26 thing: 10 thought: 9 time: 13 today: 8 tonight: 5
two: 9
us: 5
way: 8 we: 30 work: 10
yes: 6 you: 169 your: 18

VERBS
ask: 10
be: 26 been: 12
can: 35 come: 12 could: 7
did: 11 didn’t: 5 do: 40 does: 5 doesn’t: 6 don’t: 39
done: 5
get: 26 getting: 9 got: 24
had: 21 have: 17 haven’t: 6 having: 5
is: 49
keep: 5 know: 56
look: 5
make: 7 might: 6
need: 8
put: 6
reckon: 6 remember: 6
say: 10 see: 9
think: 31 told: 6
wanna: 9 want: 13 was: 100 wasn’t: 5 went: 8 were: 7
will: 7 would: 14 wouldn’t: 5

ADVECTIVES/ADVERBS
about: 34 actually: 11 again: 9 all: 23 amazing: 5 any: 5
around: 8 as: 24
big: 9 but: 59 by: 5
fucking: 9
how: 16
just: 60
like: 80
maybe: 11 more: 7
never: 9 new: 7 nice: 13 now: 7
off: 10 on: 43 one: 27
pretty: 5
really: 36
said: 16 so: 55 some: 10
there: 43 though: 7 too: 7
very: 14
when: 16 where: 16 why: 7
yeah: 58

ALL
back: 12 better: 6
down: 11
enough: 7(-verb) even: 7(-noun) everything: 6
go: 19(-adv) good: 6(-verb)
in: 64(-verb)
little: 6(-verb)
mean: 5(-adv) much: 6(-verb)
no: 52(-verb)
okay: 6 out: 18 over: 9(-verb)
right: 10 round: 6
still: 9
then: 19(-verb)
up: 22(-noun)
well: 22 whole: 7(-verb)

OTHER
ahh: 6 ahhhh: 6 an: 13 and: 134 are: 10 at: 31
because: 13 but: 59
cos: 14
for: 24 from: 16
hey: 6
if: 17
my: 35
of: 85 oh: 38 or: 24
that: 89 the: 156 this: 45 to: 123
umm: 23
what: 30 which: 5 with: 35